Jean-Marie Le Pen dies aged 96 as family confirm death of National Front founder

Jean-Marie Le Pen, the father of Marine Le Pen, has died aged 96, according to French media.

After spending several weeks in a care facility, the politician died at midday on Tuesday “surrounded by his loved ones”, according to a family statement.

Le Pen challenged the French political establishment when, after several attempts, he reached the presidential election run-off vote up against Jacques Chirac in 2002, with a campaign fuelled by populism and charisma.

Although he was on the losing side of the subsequent landslide, he is believed to have rewritten the parameters of French politics across an extensive political career, feeding debates over immigration and job security.

Famously a Holocaust denier and far right politician, Le Pen founded the French National Front party in 1972 until his daughter took over in 2011.

Four years later, while he was serving as its honorary president, he was expelled from the party by his daughter after a party congress.

He had already been suspended earlier that year after he repeated his opinion that the Holocaust was “a detail of history”.

Following his expulsion, he founded another party called the Comités Jeanne.

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Jordan Bardella, who is the current president of the National Rally, took to Twitter to confirm Le Pen’s death.

He wrote: “Today I am thinking with sadness of his family, his loved ones, and of course of Marine whose mourning must be respected.”

Bardella, who took over from Marine Le Pen as the party’s chairman in 2022, said that Jean-Marie Le Pen had “always served France” and had “defended its identity and sovereignty”.

Meanwhile, far right nationalist Eric Zemmour wrote online that, “beyond the controversies and the scandals”, Le Pen would be remembered for being one of the first “to alert France of the existential threats lurking”.

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